Friday, 19 May 2017

The Darcy Monologues

Reviewed by Nigella (maritime historian)

Against the remit of RRM and expected due regard to anthologies, I am, as it were, obliged to read and review each story in turn and I
haven’t. With two stories and a third of the next read I was Darcy fatigued.

However I did feel obliged to flip through the table of contents and at random selected stories for a quick browse. To my utter dismay different eras alternating from Regency to modern threw me and
never again will I pick up another modern day Austen novel or anthology riding on Ms Austen’s
pelisse hem. My reasons for abandonment of the Darcy Monologues can be viewed
at the bottom of the page.

Death
of a Bachelorby
Caitlin Williams inducts the reader with Mrs Fitzwiliam Darcy, nee
Elizabeth Bennet, and her beloved Darcy travelling to London post-wedding
nuptials. There is little more can be said of this well written short story with
Austenesque prose befitting the period in third person perspective. To reveal
more would entail a plot spoiler.

From
the Ashes by J Marie Croft is another Darcy in which the author narrates
the story from the perspective of Darcy’s harrowing and humiliating self analysis
of Elizabeth’s rejection of his marriage proposal. Effectively it’s a well written
cameo utilising Ms Austen’s fully-formed character with literate flair.

If Only
a Dreamby Joana Starnes
is befittingly yet another well written Darcy Monologue, and it is with regret
I could read no further. After two Darcy stories, the third began to rankle and
my thoughts strayed to how wonderful Jane Austen’s characters were, and how overused
they are by modern day authors obsessed with Fitzwilliam Darcy.

When young I didn’t appreciate Jane Austen’s
novel Pride & Prejudice foisted on me as obligatory reading at my school until
the untitled toff Fitzwilliam Darcy and Miss Elizabeth Bennet the feisty and
somewhat capricious female grabbed my attention. Both were superbly depicted by
Austen, not least Darcy’s supercilious nature and contempt for the lower orders.
Over the years I have read Pride & Prejudice several times and the chip that
sat on Darcy’s shoulder has remained as plain as a pike staff and I believe he hailed
as likely as not from Ms Austen’s observant eye of a gentleman of her time. On the
scale of social mobility Darcy is a commoner regardless of family connections
to a lordly base, for that reason Ms Austen portrayed him with sense of zeal as
though she disliked him every bit as much as Elizabeth did. His deportment demands
attention, his scornful nature thereby is his undoing in Elizabeth’s eyes until
against all that he abhors he succumbs to physical desire for that feisty madam
of the lower order. One wonders if in her own way Jane Austen derived great satisfaction
from his comedown in marriage to Elizabeth which in the social event would
result in lesser requests for his pleasure at notable soirees when news of
their marriage began spreading abroad. Greatly amusing is how Ms Austen left Darcy
in a social set he had despised and ridiculed. For me Austen is Austen, and modern
day Austenesque novels touch me not.